There was a press of people around us as I started to get down from the stool. I felt myself pushed back against the bar violently and I stared into the face of a big man in a black suit.
"What's goin' on here?"
"Let him go, Joe."
Vitale's voice came from behind and the bouncer turned his head around.
"Oh, it's you, Sam." The pressure against my chest relaxed.
I looked down at Amos.
Jennie was already kneeling beside him, loosening his shirt collar and slipping down his tie.
I bent over.
"He pass out?"
Jennie looked up at me. "I think it's more than that," she said. "He feels like he's burning up with fever. I think we'd better get him home."
"O.K.," I said. I took out a roll and threw a hundred-dollar bill down on the bar. "That's for my table." I looked up and saw the redhead staring at me, a mascara track of tears streaming down her cheeks.
I peeled off another hundred and pressed it into her hand. "Go dry your tears."
Then I bent down and picking Amos up in my arms, started for the door.
I was surprised at how light he was.
Vitale got our coats from the hat-check girl and followed me outside.
"He lives just a couple of blocks away," he said as I put Amos into the car.
It was a dirty gray rooming house and two cats stood on open garbage cans in front of the door, glaring at us with their baleful yellow night eyes.
I looked up at the building from the car window. This was no place for a man to be sick in.
The chauffeur jumped out and ran around to open the back door. I reached out and pulled the door shut.
"Go back to the Drake, driver," I said.
I turned and looked down at Amos, stretched out on the back seat.
Just because he was sick didn't make me feel any different about him. But I couldn't get over the feeling that if things had turned out a little differently, it might have been my own father lying there.
9.
The doctor came out, shaking his head.
Jennie was right behind him.
"He'll be all right when he wakes up in the morning.
Somebody fed him a slug of sodium amytal."
"What?"
"Knockout drops," Jennie said. "A Mickey."
I smiled. My hunch was right.
Vitale had left nothing to chance.
I wanted Amos, he saw to it that I got him.
"He's very run down," the doctor added. "Too much whisky and too little food.
He has some fever but he'll be all right with a little care."
"Thank you, doctor," I said, getting up.
"You're welcome, Mr. Cord. I’ll stop by in the morning to have another look at him.
Meanwhile, Miss Denton, give him one of those pills every hour."
"I’ll do that, doctor."
The doctor nodded and left.
I looked at Jennie.
"Wait a minute. You don't have to sit up all night taking care of that slob."
"I don't mind," she said. "It won't be the first time I sat up with a patient."
"A patient?"
"Of course." She looked at me quizzically. "Didn't I ever tell you I graduated from nursing school?"
I shook my head.
"St. Mary's College of Nursing, in San Francisco," she said. "Nineteen thirty-five.
I worked as a nurse for a year. Then I quit."
"Why'd you quit?"
"I got tired of it," she said, her eyes masking over.
I knew better than to push. It was her own business, anyway.